The red eye flight to London was a definite juxtaposition in scenery. I left a clear skies and a colorful sunset in Philadelphia for overcast skies and the picturesque green fields of the English countryside. In keeping with the theme of getting there being half the fun, my coworker Dean and I made our way through the long, spartan halls of Gatwick airport to the train station. Two trains, newer than those I remember from Italy’s rails, got us into the small station at Farnborough.
Tired of being cooped up, we decided the distance to the hotel looked walk able, only to find a dearth of sidewalks. Still, we avoided being hit by traffic “on the wrong side of the street” and lived to ponder the market for rolling suitcases with off-road wheels. A shower and a shave at the hotel was a welcome energy booster, followed by a quick mini-mart lunch and a walk further down the street to the office.
The lab was a computer salesman’s dream: a dozen dual-monitor workstations and as many big-screen displays in a stylishly decorated space. The rest of the office ranged from spartan to under construction: budget constraints are obviously an international phenomenon. The work progressed slowly: moving a database with a bunch of embedded applications was far from straight-forward. Doing it in another country made the struggle a bit more palatable, though.
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